


The Ride of Reason

by Talimee



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Treat, incorrigible Swedes, unplanned Tom Sawyer Reference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 17:03:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8900554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talimee/pseuds/Talimee
Summary: They are stemming back the tide. Every day, every hour, every ride.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elleth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elleth/gifts), [StellarJay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StellarJay/gifts), [Kiraly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiraly/gifts), [laufey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laufey/gifts).



Title: Ride of Reason

Prompt: 20 - **Fortitude**

Summary: They are stemming back the tide. Every day, every hour, every ride.

Characters: Agneta, Dalahästen-staff

Setting: Öresund-Station, Y90, a few days after the attack on the Dalahäst-train

Rating: none

Warnings: none

Tags: character insight, strong opinions about religion, slightly non-canon in regard to train-design

 

~*~

 

Agneta dipped the brush into her pail, wiped superfluous paint off it and made the first stroke. Red glittered in the midday sun, angry and defiant. Not quite the shade of freshly spilled blood but nearly so.

She dipped the brush in again and made another stroke, saw the thick liquid seep into small rivets and cracks in the metal underneath it. After a while she got a ladder. Dip, stroke, dip, stroke. Progress was slow, but she did not mind: After their last journey doing a bit of paintwork in the midday-sun was peaceful bliss. Above her sea gulls squawked and squabbled indignantly for scraps of fish, around her the every-day-noises of a busy port and trading-hub were drifting up the many-storeyed base. Behind her … She smiled thinly as she heard steps approaching accompanied by the tinny clang of another bucket of paint. She turned around and grinned at her colleague as he stepped up next to her onto the repair-platform.

“Morning, Agneta”, he said. His moustache stretched out when he smiled at her but his eyes turned a little sour when his gaze wandered to the destroyed mid-section of their train. “Headquarters will throw a summarily fit.”

Agneta shrugged. “Not our fault.” She turned back to her work, making space once in a while to let Lasse do his part with blue. Obviously his flesh wound was giving him trouble because he winced whenever he raised his arm.

Well, he had had worse. They all had.

After a while she got back into her rhythm, letting herself become mesmerized again by the even brush-strokes and the sun on her back. There would be precious few days like this in the coming months. With the onset of winter the rides would be more dangerous, but not less in frequency. Even with the odd sleep-less beast lumbering around, even with man-height snow-drifts blocking the track and digging in the freezing dark in the light of a small torchlight they would run the track and keep running.

It was a matter of stubborn pride as well as a necessity.

Of course, she knew what the other nations thought about the project.

The silly, the arrogant, the incorrigible Swedes squandering money and lives on a train-track nobody needed and which got compromised more often than not. Whenever she went to a bar and talked about her work to any three Finns, Norwegians and Icelanders she could name she heard it. Or saw it in their indulgent smiles: Look at these heathens, they seemed to say, they believe in _technology_.

She was finished with one side of the train and walked around the nose to the other. Now she had the sun directly in her face, so she went down again to fetch her cap and raised a hand in greeting when she saw Karin and Göran approach.

“It's a clean break”, Göran called out in way of saying hello and lifted his right arm with its cast. He also had a tin can in his left hand. It was white.

The new side Agneta was working on had not been as badly damaged as the other side and the repair crews had finished their work already, but she still remembered the sight of long and deep gauges in the folded metal of the hull and despised the grey motley the exchanged parts made of her train.

It _was_ her train.

Her parents had been engineers in the Swedish army when the project was first proposed. She had been five or six when the discussions whether they should wager so many resources on a technological fancy spilled from her parents' workshop into their home and she remembered the reverential awe with which she had drawn her tiny fingers along the delicate blue-print drawings. It had been such a mess when she first looked on them, but soon the lines and numbers arranged themselves before her bright eyes.

But she was no genius. Try as she might, she could not surpass or even reach the level of ingenuity her parents and the other engineers on the project possessed. So, in the end, she had grudgingly settled for the life of a guard and mechanic for the trains on the track that had ruled her life ever since she could remember. Her colleagues understood, and so did the Danes at Öresund. That was all the approval she needed.

She climbed up the ladder again and painted along the crest of the train, her strokes now fierce and forceful but still exact.

Leave the others to their gods – what good had _they_ ever done to humanity?

When the Old World fell and the New World was born in what the devout called a kind of Ragnarök, getting the details all wrong, but there was, of course, no reasoning with believers, the old gods may or may not have woken from their slumber and created magic. Agneta was not in a position to disprove this – and she didn't care to. She didn't _need_ to.

What concerned her was what the imaginary existence of gods did to people's minds: Some country bumpkin might draw a stave on his barn door and the barn might not burn down during the next thunderstorm. Was that prove that magic existed? Of course not, but suddenly this lunk was called a mage and, even worse, called a Chosen One. That set him apart and _above_ the others who had had enough brains to install a lightning-rod on the roof of their barn. No. Gods and magic might exist, but that was no reason to abandon trust in technology, _which worked equally well for everyone_.

The Öresund-line was proof of that and it was proof of the Swedes' iron will to reclaim their country by their own hands and minds. It reached out into the deadly lands, piercing through the veil of disease and horror. With every ride they pushed the nightmares back and created the space in their minds for the knowledge that one day all would be well again.

Agneta made her last stroke and let her brush fall back into the nearly empty tin. She climbed down the ladder and, returning to where they had started a few hours earlier, she checked on their collective work and a grim smile started to play around her lips.

In the bright afternoon sun, glittering in red and white and blue a Dalahäst reared up in defiance of the world.

It was true that the track was not safe yet and would not be for a long while. But what did these _Believers_ expected them to do? Tear down their workshops and plant sacred groves in their stead?

They would do no such thing.

The Swedes and the Danes had a purpose. The light of reason had once shone in this world. They would ignite it again.

 


End file.
